The Poet's Poet Part 6

If angels have hereditary wings, If not by Salic law is handed down The poet's laurel crown, To thee, born in the purple of the throne, The laurel must belong.

[Footnote: _Sister Songs_.]

But these lines must not be considered apart from the fanciful poem in which they grow.

What have poets to say on the larger question of their social inheritance? This is a subject on which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, at least, poets should have had ideas, and the varying rank given to their lyrical heroes is not without significance.

The renaissance idea, that the n.o.bleman is framed to enjoy, rather than to create, beauty,--that he is the connoisseur rather than the genius,--seems to have persisted in the eighteenth century, and at the beginning of the romantic movement to have combined with the new exaltation of the lower cla.s.ses to work against the plausible view that the poet is the exquisite flowering of the highest lineage.

Of course, it is not to be expected that there should be unanimity of opinion among poets as to the ideal singer's rank. In several instances, confidence in human egotism would enable the reader to make a shrewd guess as to a poet's stand on the question of caste, without the trouble of investigation. Gray, the gentleman, as a matter of course consigns his "rustic Milton" to oblivion. Lord Byron follows the fortunes of "Childe" Harold. Lord Tennyson usually deals with t.i.tled artists.

[Footnote: See _Lord Burleigh_, Eleanore in _A Becket_, and the Count in _The Falcon_.] Greater significance attaches to the gentle birth of the two prominent fictional poets of the century, Sordello and Aurora Leigh, yet in both poems the plot interest is enough to account for it. In Sordello's case, especially, Taurello's dramatic offer of political leaders.h.i.+p to his son suffices to justify Browning's choice of his hero's rank. [Footnote: Other poems celebrating n.o.ble poets are _The Troubadour_, Praed; _The King's Tragedy_, Rossetti; _David, Charles di Trocca_, Cale Young Rice.]

None of these instances of aristocratic birth are of much importance, and wherever there is a suggestion that the poet's birth represents a tenet of the poem's maker, one finds, naturally, praise of the singer who springs from the ma.s.ses. The question of the singer's social origin was awake in verse even before Burns. So typical an eighteenth century poet as John Hughes, in lines _On a Print of Tom Burton, a Small Coal Man_, moralizes on the phenomenon that genius may enter into the breast of one quite beyond the social pale. Crabbe [Footnote: See _The Patron_.] and Beattie,[Footnote: See _The Minstrel_.] also, seem not to be departing from the Augustan tradition in treating the fortunes of their peasant bards. But with Burns, of course, the question comes into new prominence. Yet he spreads no propaganda. His statement is merely personal:

Gie me ae spark of nature's fire!

That's a' the learning I desire.

Then, though I drudge through dub and mire At plough or cart, My muse, though homely in attire, May touch the heart.

[Footnote: _Epistle to Lapraik_.]

It is not till later verse that poets springing from the soil are given sweeping praise, because of the mysterious communion they enjoy with "nature." [Footnote: For verse glorifying the peasant aspect of Burns see Thomas Campbell, _Ode to Burns_; Whittier, _Burns_; Joaquim Miller, _Burns and Byron_; William Bennett, _To the Memory of Burns_; A. B.

Street, _Robbie Burns_ (1867); O. W. Holmes, _The Burns Centennial_; Richard Realf, _Burns_; Simon Kerl, _Burns_ (1868); Sh.e.l.ley Halleck, _Burns_.] Obviously the doctrine is reinforced by Wordsworth, though few of his farmer folk are geniuses, and the closest ill.u.s.tration of his belief that the peasant, the child of nature, is the true poet, is found in the character of the old pedlar, in the _Excursion_. The origin of Keats might be a.s.sumed to have its share in molding poets' views on caste, but only the most insensitive have dared to touch upon his c.o.c.kney birth. In the realm of Best Sellers, however, the hero of May Sinclair's novel, _The Divine Fire_, who is presumably modeled after Keats, is a lower cla.s.s Londoner, presented with the most unflinching realism that the author can achieve. Consummate indeed is the artistry with which she enables him to keep the sympathy of his readers, even while he commits the unpardonable sin of dropping his h's. [Footnote: Another historical poet whose lowly origin is stressed in poetry is Marlowe, the son of a cobbler. See Alfred Noyes, _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_; Josephine Preston Peabody, _Marlowe_.] Here and there, the poet from the ranks lifts his head in verse, throughout the last century. [Footnote: For poet-heroes of this sort see John Clare, _The Peasant Poet_; Mrs. Browning, _Lady Geraldine's Courts.h.i.+p_; Robert Buchanan, _Poet Andrew_; T. E. Browne, _Tommy Big Eyes_; Whittier, _Eliot_; J. G. Saxe, _Murillo and his Slave_.] And at present, with the penetration of the "realistic" movement into verse, one notes a slight revival of interest in the type, probably because the lower cla.s.ses are popularly conceived to have more first hand acquaintance with sordidness than those hedged about by family tradition. [Footnote: See John Davidson, _A Ballad in Blank Verse_; Vachel Lindsay, _The North Star Whispers to the Blacksmith's Son_; John Masefield, _Dauber_; Francis Carlin, _MacSweeney the Rhymer_ (1918).] Still, for the most part, the present att.i.tude of poets toward the question seems to be one of indifference, since they feel that other factors are more important than caste in determining the singer's genius. Most writers of today would probably agree with the sentiment of the lines on Browning,

What if men have found Poor footmen or rich merchants on the roll Of his forbears? Did they beget his soul?

[Footnote: Henry van d.y.k.e, _Sonnet_.]

If poets have given us no adequate body of data by which we may predict the birth of a genius, they have, on the other hand, given us most minute descriptions whereby we may recognize the husk containing the poetic gift. The skeptic may ask, What has the poet to do with his body?

since singers tell

us so repeatedly that their souls are aliens upon earth, Clothed in flesh to suffer: maimed of wings to soar.

[Footnote: _The Centenary of Sh.e.l.ley_.]

as Swinburne phrases it. Yet, mysteriously, the artist's soul is said to frame a tenement for its brief imprisonment that approximately expresses it, so that it is only in the most beautiful bodies that we are to look for the soul that creates beauty. Though poets of our time have not troubled themselves much with philosophical explanations of the phenomenon, they seem to concur in the Platonic reasoning of their father Spenser, who argues,

So every spirit, as it is most pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight With cheerful grace, and amiable sight; For of the soul the body form doth take, For soul is form, and doth the body make.

[Footnote: _Hymn in Honour of Beauty_.]

What an absurd test! one is likely to exclaim, thinking of a swarthy Sappho, a fat Chaucer, a bald Shakespeare, a runt Pope, a club-footed Byron, and so on, almost _ad infinitum_. Would not a survey of notable geniuses rather indicate that the poet's dreams arise because he is like the sensitive plant of Sh.e.l.ley's allegory, which

Desires what it hath not, the beautiful?[Footnote: _The Sensitive Plant_.]

Spenser himself foresaw our objections and felt obliged to modify his p.r.o.nouncement, admitting--

Yet oft it falls that many a gentle mind Dwells in deformed tabernacle drownd, Either by chance, against the course of kind, Or through unaptness of the substance found, Which it a.s.sumed of some stubborn ground That will not yield unto her form's direction, But is preformed with some foul imperfection.

But the modern poet is not likely to yield his point so easily as does Spenser. Rather he will cast aside historical records as spurious, and insist that all genuine poets have been beautiful. Of the many poems on Sappho written in the last century, not one accepts the tradition that she was ill-favored, but restores a flower-like portrait of her from Alcaeus' line,

Violet-weaving, pure, sweet-smiling Sappho.

As for Shakespeare, here follows a very characteristic idealization of his extant portrait:

A pale, plain-favored face, the smile where-of Is beautiful; the eyes gray, changeful, bright, Low-lidded now, and luminous as love, Anon soul-searching, ominous as night, Seer-like, inscrutable, revealing deeps Where-in a mighty spirit wakes or sleeps.

[Footnote: C. L. Hildreth, _At the Mermaid_ (1889).]

The most unflattering portrait is no bar to poets' confidence in their brother's beauty, yet they are happiest when fas.h.i.+oning a frame for geniuses of whom we have no authentic description. "The love-dream of his unrecorded face," [Footnote: Rossetti, _Sonnet on Chatterton_.]

has led to many an idealized portrait of such a long-dead singer.

Marlowe has been the favorite figure of this sort with which the fancies of our poets have played. From the glory and power of his dramas their imaginations inevitably turn to

The gloriole of his flame-coloured hair, The lean, athletic body, deftly planned To carry that swift soul of fire and air; The long, thin flanks, the broad breast, and the grand Heroic shoulders!

[Footnote: Alfred Noyes, _At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_.]

It is no wonder that in the last century there has grown up so firm a belief in the poet's beauty, one reflects, remembering the seraphic face of Sh.e.l.ley, the Greek sensuousness of Keats' profile, the romantic fire of Byron's expression. [Footnote: Browning in his youth must have encouraged the tradition. See Macready's Diary, in which he describes Browning as looking "more like a youthful poet than any man I ever saw."] Yet it is a belief that must have been sorely tried since the invention of the camera has brought the verse-writer's countenance, in all its literalness, before the general public. Was it only an accident that the popularity of current poetry died just as cameras came into existence? How many a potential admirer has been lost by a glance at the frontispiece in a book of verse! In recent years, faith in soul-made beauty seems again to have shown itself justified. Likenesses of Rupert Brooke, with his "angel air," [Footnote: See W. W. Gibson, _Rupert Brooke_.] of Alan Seeger, and of Joyce Kilmer in his undergraduate days, are perhaps as beautiful as any the romantic period could afford.

Still the young enthusiast of the present day should be warned not to be led astray by wolves in sheep's clothing, for the spurious claimant of the laurel is learning to employ all the devices of the art photographer to obscure and transform his unaesthetic visage.

We have implied that insistence upon the artist's beauty arose with the romantic movement, but a statement to that effect would have to be made with reservations. The eighteenth century was by no means without such a conception, as the satires of that period testify, being full of allusions to poetasters' physical defects, with the obvious implication that they are indicative of spiritual deformity, and of literary sterility. Then, from within the romantic movement itself, a critic might exhume verse indicating that faith in the beautiful singer was by no means universal;--that, on the other hand, the interestingly ugly bard enjoyed considerable vogue. He would find, for example, Moore's _Lines on a Squinting Poetess_, and Praed's _The Talented Man_. In the latter verses the speaker says of her literary fancy,

He's hideous, I own it; but fame, Love, Is all that these eyes can adore.

He's lame,--but Lord Byron was lame, Love, And dumpy, but so is Tom Moore.

Still, rightly interpreted, such verse on poetasters is quite in line with the poet's conviction that beauty and genius are inseparable. So, likewise, is the more recent verse of Edgar Lee Masters, giving us the brutal self-portrait of Minerva Jones, the poetess of Spoon River,

Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street For my heavy body, c.o.c.k eye, and rolling walk, [Footnote: _Spoon River Anthology_.]

for she is only a would-be poet, and the cry, "I yearned so for beauty!"

of her spirit, baffled by its embodiment, is almost insupportable.

Walt Whitman alludes to his face as "the heart's geography map," and a.s.sures us,

Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapped, [Footnote: _Out from Behind This Mask_.]

but one needs specific instructions for interpretation of the poetic topography to which Whitman alludes. What are the poet's distinguis.h.i.+ng features?

Meditating on the subject, one finds his irreverent thoughts inevitably wandering to hair, but in verse taken up with hirsute descriptions, there is a false note. It makes itself felt in Mrs. Browning's picture of Keats,

The real Adonis, with the hymeneal Fresh vernal buds half sunk between His youthful curls.

[Footnote: _A Vision of Poets_.]

It is obnoxious in Alexander Smith's portrait of his hero,

A lovely youth, With dainty cheeks, and ringlets like a girl's.

[Footnote: _A Life Drama_.]

And in poorer verse it is unquotable. [Footnote: See Henry Timrod, _A Vision of Poesy_ (1898); Frances Fuller, _To Edith May_ (1851); Metta Fuller, _Lines to a Poetess_ (1851).] Someone has pointed out that decadent poetry is always distinguished by over-insistence upon the heroine's hair, and surely sentimental verse on poets is marked by the same defect. Hair is doubtless essential to poetic beauty, but the poet's strength, unlike Samson's, emphatically does not reside in it.

"Broad Homeric brows," [Footnote: See Wordsworth, _On the Death of James Hogg_; Browning, _Sordello_, _By the Fireside_; Mrs. Browning, _Aurora Leigh_; Princ.i.p.al Shairp, _Balliol Scholars_; Alfred Noyes, _Tales of the Mermeid Inn_.] poets invariably possess, but the less phrenological aspect of their beauty is more stressed. The differentiating mark of the singer's face is a certain luminous quality, as of the soul s.h.i.+ning through. Lamb noticed this peculiarity of Coleridge, declaring, "His face when he repeats his verses hath its ancient glory; an archangel a little damaged." [Footnote: E. V. Lucas, _The Life of Charles Lamb_, Vol. I., p. 500.] Francis Thompson was especially struck by this phenomenon. In lines _To a Poet Breaking Silence_, he a.s.serts,

Yes, in this silent inters.p.a.ce G.o.d sets his poems in thy face,

and again, in _Her Portrait_, he muses,

How should I gage what beauty is her dole, Who cannot see her countenance for her soul, As birds see not the cas.e.m.e.nt for the sky.